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3.62 AVERAGE
3.62 AVERAGE
it's amazing how a book called "galileo's daughter" can just be a biography of galileo with some letters his daughter wrote interspersed throughout. is this feminism
Great recommendation from a friend. A lovely blend of physics, original letters from Galileo's daughter, and the turmoil caused by scientific discoveries and their conflict with the Catholic Church. Excellent book about Galileo and the religious/political climate at the time.
This was my review for Kaiwaka Library...
Galileo, as well as being a renowned artist and inventor, was also a family man. One of his daughters, Virginia, was placed in a convent when she was 13 years old - as was normal for a family of their standing at the time. Suor Maria Celeste, as she became, was very intelligent herself, and exchanged letters with her father for many years. Some of those letters have survived to this day.
Sobel uses these letters to frame a biography of the great man and the world going on around him. For all that this sounds like a very dry topic, the book is a surprisingly easy read.
Galileo, as well as being a renowned artist and inventor, was also a family man. One of his daughters, Virginia, was placed in a convent when she was 13 years old - as was normal for a family of their standing at the time. Suor Maria Celeste, as she became, was very intelligent herself, and exchanged letters with her father for many years. Some of those letters have survived to this day.
Sobel uses these letters to frame a biography of the great man and the world going on around him. For all that this sounds like a very dry topic, the book is a surprisingly easy read.
Not as great a book and story as I was hoping. Not sure it lived up to the hype
informative
sad
slow-paced
The title was a bit misleading, because this was more about Galileo than his daughter, but it was still fascinating.
informative
medium-paced
This was a fine biography of Galileo that faltered in its attempts to make the letters from his daughter a centerpiece of the work. Sobel's translation of the letters and introduction of them to a wider audience was an important task to undertake, and the letters do provide many interesting and touching insights. However, many of the letter inclusions feel forced.
Overall, I enjoyed the book, and I learned a lot about Galileo and the history of our knowledge of the solar system.
Overall, I enjoyed the book, and I learned a lot about Galileo and the history of our knowledge of the solar system.
After 150 pages I decided if this book didn’t end by smashing the patriarchy, I didn’t want to read anymore. And since it would end in 1642, I gave up. Say what you will about ‘the times,’ it’s impossible to buy the idea that a well-off, well-educated, intelligent and self-respecting public figure can’t know he’s participating in screwing over half of humanity.
Back in the days of Galileo, the author tells us, it was atypical for (male) academics to marry. And so it was with Galileo and his contemporaries, who didn’t marry but nevertheless enjoyed living in conjugal union with someone from the grateful lower classes, and begetting bastard children with them, despite being “devout” Catholics and, in Galileo’s case, personal friends with the freaking Pope.
Now if one of your children is a boy, you might, like Galileo, go to the trouble of getting him legitimatized through your political and clerical (hypocritical) relationships, even though he is a sullen and not terribly sharp child. If the other children are girls, bright and dutiful as they may be, put those inconvenient lesser beings in a convent, which operates like an adult orphanage, a workhouse made up of cast-off daughters who live in poverty, as they would in any poorhouse, where they can labor for the church without further ado and through no choice of their own. What is it but a form of white slavery?
There aren’t too many books that push my feminist button so bad, but I found it all reprehensible. And to top it off the daughter in question was a fawning and overly loving person with apparently a big forgiving heart that made me want to puke. The other daughter spent her days depressed and in the convent infirmary for want of a sharp object. Quite rightly, in my book. There should be another “Galileo’s Daughter” devoted to the one who was right in the head.
If you are really have to know everything about Galileo, you’d probably like this book, which was not uninteresting. As for me, enough was enough and thank God it’s over.
Back in the days of Galileo, the author tells us, it was atypical for (male) academics to marry. And so it was with Galileo and his contemporaries, who didn’t marry but nevertheless enjoyed living in conjugal union with someone from the grateful lower classes, and begetting bastard children with them, despite being “devout” Catholics and, in Galileo’s case, personal friends with the freaking Pope.
Now if one of your children is a boy, you might, like Galileo, go to the trouble of getting him legitimatized through your political and clerical (hypocritical) relationships, even though he is a sullen and not terribly sharp child. If the other children are girls, bright and dutiful as they may be, put those inconvenient lesser beings in a convent, which operates like an adult orphanage, a workhouse made up of cast-off daughters who live in poverty, as they would in any poorhouse, where they can labor for the church without further ado and through no choice of their own. What is it but a form of white slavery?
There aren’t too many books that push my feminist button so bad, but I found it all reprehensible. And to top it off the daughter in question was a fawning and overly loving person with apparently a big forgiving heart that made me want to puke. The other daughter spent her days depressed and in the convent infirmary for want of a sharp object. Quite rightly, in my book. There should be another “Galileo’s Daughter” devoted to the one who was right in the head.
If you are really have to know everything about Galileo, you’d probably like this book, which was not uninteresting. As for me, enough was enough and thank God it’s over.